Tag: Soul Therapy

What Are Your Restorers?

What restores you? What brings you back to wholeness when you are utterly depleted?

A warm bath with rose petals
A steaming cup of chai tea
The therapy of watching the rain from your window
Reading beautiful poetry
Dappled light dancing on your face
The romance of stargazing from the porch on balmy evening

Your restorers are simple things, soothing things. They are things that rebuild your tired body and mend your soul. They are gentle healing touchstones that resuscitate your inner life. They say that ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’, which makes it easy to reach for the destructive things that could send you further down a spiral of negativity. But, do you know how to reach out for the things that restore your balance or refuel your inner juices instead?

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What do you turn to at the end of a long day?

A hug

A heartfelt conversation with a friend
A healing crystal

Dancing to your favourite song

A vase of flowers on your night stand
Beautiful soft cotton linen
Lavender under your pillow

The more I explore conversations with women around self-love, self-care and depletion (especially during times of extreme emotional turmoil), the more I see how we don’t create space for the sacred ceremony of restoration. Instead, we wait until we reach the messy edge of quiet desperation, a place that all too familiar. A sentiment constantly reinforced is that there are so many things that demand our energy. We are the givers, lending our hands and hearts to those who need us. We are the hard workers, pouring everything we have into the beauty we wish to create. We lose ourselves in the process. We forget to nurture ourselves back to fullness and so we run dry. But why should it take takes reaching breaking point to heed your soul’s call or for you to remember to breathe easy, be gentle, nurture and restore so that the chambers of your heart fill up with the energy, light and inspiration your need to keep going?

If there is one profound lesson that reaching back to life from the edge of burnout, of dealing with lost pregnancies and those taxing moments midst of my fertility journey has taught me, it’s that  – I need to be my own nurturer. Sometimes, it’s harder to choose what serves my well-being over what will cause more harm, because those bumps in the road can become excuses for all the wrong things (overindulging in sugar, not exercising, not meditating, relinquishing important commitments, etc). This understanding inspires me keep asking questions about how I allow moments for restoration daily in order to nurture my well-being and where I can integrate self-care rituals so that they become a natural part of my life that continues to raise my vibration or keep me both spiritually and emotionally grounded.

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I’ve found these two questions are powerful anchors that guide me back to myself and I encourage you to explore them for yourself too:

What is the most healing or nurturing thing I can do for myself right now? and What restores me?

Take stock of whatever your restorers are. Remember them, write them down and keep them close to your heart. Make room for them at the end of each day. They will serve you. They will heal you. They bring you back to life when you are on the brink of falling apart. And if you do fall apart, because sometimes you need to, they are the balm that will piece your fragmented soul back together.

 

Lavender Flower Chai Tea

Full Moon.  

A gentle spiced tea recipe to soothe your soul and bring you home to yourself at the end of a long day.

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To make one pot of lavender chai tea you’ll need (Recipe from Flowering Within book):

2 to 3 tablespoons of black loose leaf tea
1 teaspoon of dried lavender or 2 to 3 fresh sprigs
6 cardamom pods
4 star anise
1 teaspoon of fresh ginger
1 or 2 cinnamon sticks
10 peppercorns
6 whole cloves
A pinch of nutmeg
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Raw Honey or condensed milk to sweeten

Directions: Add three or 4 cups of water to a pot and bring to a boil. Then add all the chai spices and lavender to the pot. Lower the heat and let it simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Turn the heat off and let it cool for a few minutes before straining it into a teapot or heat-safe container.

Sweeten to your taste, add milk if you’d like and then enjoy a nice cup of lavender chai tea to soothe your soul. This recipe should make enough for about 3 servings.

To make a single cup, mix enough ingredients to fill a tea strainer. Place the tea strainer in your cup and top with hot boiled water. Let the tea steep for 3 minutes.

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“We make tea in an empty vessel and then we become a vessel to receive it. The practice of maintaining this emptiness runs through all the world’s mystical traditions.”
~ Frank Hadley Murphy

Only Peace…

All my life what I’ve craved most is peace.

Peace away from the violent conflict of my home life while growing up. Peace away from the bullies who tormented me at school. Peace away from toxic work environments and bosses that I seemed to keep attracting. The peace to breathe. The quietude to hear my own thoughts and to listen to the soft wild whispers of my heart.

It’s little wonder that was so prone to depression in my teens and early twenties. Except for when I was fortunate enough to escape to the wild comfort of Nature, peace seemed hard to come by. I didn’t know how to find it back then. It seemed rare, and fleeting and difficult to find for so long.

Although I still do fall into dark and melancholic depths when my thoughts are locked in negativity and the past, I’ve noticed something in recent months. Peace is finding its way to me more and more. I had to just take a moment to be fully aware of this fact. To notice it and to appreciate it….Peace is finding me in so many beautiful ways. Not just when I am out in Nature, but in simple moments throughout my days. And it doesn’t come when I’m searching, striving and struggling to hold on to it.

If “hope is a thing with feathers” as Emily Dickinson said, then peace is a thing that wraps its soft and delicate presence around me when I release the trying, the needing and the wanting it so much.

There is no searching in sitting by the window to watch the glistening beads of rain drip from the tree leaves. Only peace.

There is no striving when I give myself the space to read poetry or write the words embedded in my soul. Only peace.

There is no trying while brushing my hands through the yarrow, lemon verbena and rose geranium in the mornings, revelling in their fragrant beauty. Only peace.

There is no struggling in lighting tea light candles to fill my home with a warm glow on a gloomy afternoon when the sky is grey and stormy. Only peace.

There is no needing in strolling around the garden under the moonlight, breathing in the cool night air. Only peace.

Of all the lessons and blessings that I’ve uncovered over the last few years since I began more actively unshackling myself of things that don’t serve me and since I’ve devoted myself to a more spiritually inclined authentic path, learning to understand the nature of peace and what it means to me personally has been one of my most cherished lessons.

I am grateful to spend my days leaning into peace with ease, allowing it to find me in each breathe and in the simple ways of daily life.

What does peace mean to you? How do you lean into it?

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